There are multiple levels operating...
Cabanne: I also noted that this passion [for chess] was especially great when you weren't painting. So, I wondered whether, during those periods, the gestures directing the movements of pawns in space didn’t give rise to imaginary creations - yes, I know, you don’t like that word - creations which, in your eyes, had as much value as the real creation of your pictures and, further, established a new plastic function in space.
Duchamp: In a certain sense, yes. A game of chess is a visual and plastic thing, and if it isn’t geometric in the static sense of the word, it is mechanical, since it moves; it’s a drawing, it’s a mechanical reality. The pieces aren’t pretty in themselves, any more than is the form of the game, but what is pretty - if the word ‘pretty’ can be used - is the movement. Well, it is mechanical, the way, for example, a Calder is mechanical. In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s grey matter.
Cabanne: In short, there is in chess a gratuitous play of forms, as opposed to the play of functional forms on the canvas.
Duchamp: Yes. Completely. Although chess play is not so gratuitous; there is choice ..
Cabanne: But no intended purpose?
Duchamp: No. There is no special purpose. That above all is important.
Cabanne: Chess is the ideal work of art?
Duchamp: That could be. Also, the milieu of chess players is far more sympathetic than that of artists. These people are completely cloudy, completely blind, wearing blinkers. Madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn’t, in general. That’s probably what interested me the most.
May 27th
L'Italia non è né di destra né di...
Giulia B.: [...] di chi è la colpa?
guia: giulia: di chi lo vota, e lo voterà sempre di più. del fatto, citando quel gran genio, che l'italia non è né di destra né di sinistra: è di berlusconi (antropologicamente, intendo, non in quanto comprata o culturalmente formata; era così ben prima di drive in; è, come diceva quell'altro, il berlusconi che è in me.) troncando al punto giusto la risposta di d'alema sul conflitto di interessi: «il problema è politico: sono gli italiani.»
May 6th